


cashing in our bad luck

by girl0nfire



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, F/M, Gen, I accidently brOT3'd everywhere, Inspired by Art, Mild Gore, Oneshot, help I can't stop writing about terrible things happening to good people, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 16:45:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl0nfire/pseuds/girl0nfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James, Steve, and Natasha stick together in a New York where the dead walk again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cashing in our bad luck

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this gorgeous piece of art](http://vylla-art.tumblr.com/post/30839594832/this-isnt-a-war-steve-its-a-back-alley-a) done by a friend on tumblr. Stop what you're doing and go look at it **now**.
> 
> Title from "Some Nights" by Fun.

Sometimes they watch the sun sink slowly behind the Empire State building, the sky shot through with red and gold, and pretend that the orange of the fires is just its reflection. That the smoke curling steadily upwards is just wayward clouds for them to lie underneath, pointing out shapes and patterns until the blue darkness overtakes the sky.

The only difference is that the stars don’t seem to come out anymore.

+

Steve carries a trashcan lid like a shield, and James hasn’t seen that look in his face since they were taking enemy fire in Fallujah. Everywhere is a battlefield now; no trenches, no green zones, every sidewalk is no-man’s-land and every building is a fallout shelter. They shoulder weapons like warriors, faces smeared red and black with bloody ashes and they look up to the sky for a sign.

+

Manhattan has always been the city of the dead, Natasha likes to think. Crowds of people moving as one, pushing, shoving carelessly with no purpose but movement, no goal but avoiding all the other pairs of staring eyes. 

The sidewalks still pulse with people. The crowds still writhe.

She stopped looking at their faces a long time ago.

+

It’s hard trusting anyone when you can’t see what’s swimming through their veins. When anyone’s cells can betray you, when your own cells could sell you out quick and easy as breathing.

Trust isn’t what James calls it. Trust is for peacetime.

This is war.

+

They take turns keeping watch. It’s pretense, they all know it, but it’s nice to pretend to sleep for a while.

When it’s Steve’s turn, he paces, checks the padlocks, cleans their guns. Natasha figures he can’t stop moving because he feels so trapped. 

She listens to James’ fake-sleep breaths and wonders why he doesn’t just give up.

+

Stories like theirs don’t have heroes.

Which is good, Steve thinks. It’s good because heroes shouldn’t know the best way to gut another human being with a crowbar; heroes don’t sit by a hand-crank radio screaming into silence.

Heroes don’t wonder what it would be like to join the villains.

+

The day that James loses his arm is the day that Steve loses everything.

It takes the both of them to hold James together, Natasha cradling his head in her lap, stroking his sweat-damp hair and telling him how everything is going to be alright. She was always a very talented liar.

Steve can feel his heartbeat everywhere as he rips his shirt into strips, struggling to wrap them tightly around James’ shoulder. Steve feels his heartbeat in his palms as he presses his weight down, trying to keep his best friend’s blood from turning red in the dirty air, trying to keep himself from flying apart. The thud of his heart matches the pulse underneath his hands, and the other man’s screams echo around the glass cage Steve’s built in his mind, the one that holds the darkness back.

Everything shatters when James’ eyes go dark.

+

It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Natasha watches Steve’s face crumple, watches him fall over James’ still body, and when fight or flight kicks in, it takes a split-second too long for her to decide.

Suddenly, everything is happening backwards and too-fast, there’s more blood than there should be, screams, one more moving body that there was a moment ago. Steve takes James by the arm, throwing him to the ground, and Natasha doesn’t know whose teeth are flashing.

She hasn’t made the door before both sets of screams are silent again.

+

Natasha looks for their faces in the crowds, now.

She stays up high, waiting. She’s got two slugs with their names carved on them.

She still pretends the fires are just the glow of the sunset, and she still watches the smoke for rabbits and faces.

The sky still goes blue-dark at night and the stars still hide.

Nothing’s changed, except everything has. She clutches the trashcan shield a little closer and never takes her eyes off the ground.


End file.
